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This would allow Durand to create a complete “all-through school”, educating inner London children aged from three to 18.

Durand is a semi-independent "foundation" school, giving it a greater say over budgets. The school is already working on plans for a new “middle school” within its own buildings to teach children up to 13.

Durands has now applied for a £25million grant from the central Government to develop the site. Some of the money has been also raised from a health club which the school runs on the site in Lambeth.

The scheme was first disclosed by The Daily Telegraph last June, Jim Davies, the chairman of governors, said ministers and senior Tories backed the plan.

He said: “Everyone is keen – they all think it is a wonderful idea. It is a national problem with children from challenging backgrounds going on not to do so well.

“We think we have found a formula to break the link between deprivation and failure.”

Kate Hoey, Labour’s candidate for Vauxhall, described the plans as “positive and innovative”. She added: “It is great to give these young people more space at school.”

St Cuthman's sits in a 35 acre site in west Sussex, 56 miles from London, and includes a grade two listed house which was designed in 1874 by Richard Norman Shaw.

The former Duchess of Bedford once owned the estate in the 1930s when she would fly from home in Woburn in her Gypsy Moth, which she would house in a specially built aircraft hangar.

It then became a public school, before the local council ran it as a special school, which closed six years ago.